There are certain incidents that occur in a woman's life that make for a Greek tragedy, the Shakespearean version would be titled "Oh the Unfortunate". Getting stuck in a torrential downpour on a humid summer day wearing white with no umbrella. In the bathroom stall at the hottest club, no one else around, no toilet paper and you're on your period. Or around 11PM you find a good movie on cable, discover the double-fudge brownie mix with walnuts in the cabinet but have no eggs in the fridge, you just painted your toenails and put on your PJs. This morning I dropped my jar of Vaseline in the toilet. I had just poured a generous portion of Pine-Sol in the toilet so I could give it a good scrub. Vaseline is one of those staples in a woman's life - it's for the lips, for the hands, dry feet, and I've even used it to take off eye make-up when I ran out of the good stuff. It seem to happen in slow motion. I was dipping my finger into the jar and lost my grip, it teetered on the edge of the shelf in the medicine cabinet, then bounced down and hit the bathroom sink. I fumbled for it, it was too complex to handle so early in the morning. I may have even given the jar the extra gravity it needed to make it over into the toilet. Plop. The expression on my face changed, it's like being out to dinner with a group of coworkers and the waitress tells the entire table decibels above the noise around you that your card has been declined. "Oh no! What will I do without my Vaseline?" Life as I knew it changed at that moment. My mind raced. I thought of ways to improvise until I could make it to the drugstore. How long could I go with unmoisturized lips or dry heels? The jar of Vaseline had been in my life for months, maybe even a year. The things we hold onto, the little things that make our lives better. Scream! I scooped the jar out of the toilet and accepted the fact that it was not reusable. Bubbles smelling of Pine-Sol filled the jar. I placed the lid on and threw it into the trash. I looked around the bathroom, maybe the MacGyver or Martha Stewart in me wanted to concoct something else to tie me over until I could replace the only jar of Vaseline I had in the house. Hmm? Olive oil and that lotion I never use from Bath & Body Works. Heavy cream, butter and baby oil?
It was gone, I had to move on - and for that moment it was tragic.
